How to...Return Tired Brands to Fame and Glory

Here’s the dirty secret your social agency or content agency won’t tell you – the stats show that just 5% of content online generates 95% of all engagement. The same is true specifically for videos on YouTube – the top 5% gets the 95% of the attention. This is what the fine folks at the Webbys mean when they say, “awesome or dead.” If you aren’t going to make something awesome, there’s literally no point in making it. 

The stats also say that, to combat this problem, 70% of marketers are planning to increase the amount of content they produce in the coming year, and 2/3 of those say 'greatly increase'.

Unfortunately, that’s not going help. There are simply too many brands in the world creating too much useless, pointless, meaningless content.

At Impero, we work specifically with tired brands. And, when you’re a tired brand, and you’re facing challenges in terms of declining sales and customers migrating towards other brands, you are never going to just ‘content’ your way out of it.

You need to do something different, and something meaningful – and it has to be strategically planned to deliver business results, not vanity metrics like views, shares, or likes.

Here’s some insight into how the team works at Impero… 

If you’re losing, you need to grow the brand.

Brand growth comes from new consumers. (Not the loyalty of old ones). Therefore, you need to find new consumers to put your brand back on the map. Find a new message or a new group to communicate to.

This is Old Spice Man Your Man Could Smell Like model. They knew they had effectively lost a whole generation of consumers, so they took decisive action to win the next over with a now famous series of ads with zany, internet humour. They quickly went from old and dusty back to best-selling brand by picking a new target (young men and the women who mostly buy them deodorant) and appealing to them over and over again. 

Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

When you find yourself losing a war, pick a whole new fight (don’t just change your weapon). For example, if you’re a big gin brand on the decline; get away from the category standard fluff like botanicals and cocktails and find something new to talk about, to appeal to new consumers. That’s what Tanquerray and Bombay Sapphire and every other gin brand does. 

Don’t scrap out in that mess, try to win over beer drinkers, not Tanqueray drinkers. This was the thinking behind our latest work for Beefeater gin. 

Great brands are famous for one thing, and one thing only. 

Never mind your six content pillars, your 17 different messages, across seven different channels. Never mind your segmented audiences, your endless programmatic tweaking.

Instead, find your single-minded purpose and exploit it. Answer the question “why would anyone want to see this?” We call this a fame point and we help brands find theirs. Then we exploit it, over and over and over again.

The meme artists – @thefatjewish, @beigecardigan, @moistbhudda – they have this down. You follow one, know know exactly what you’re signing up for, and you’re delighted to see them in your newsfeed. 

Consistency is critically underrated at the moment.

Enough said.

Brands should inspire consumers, not reflect them.

Brands who try to get ‘down with the kids’ always fail (hey, Pepsi!). 

Brands who lead consumers – Nike, Apple, Red Bull, Vans – have carved their space in culture. You know exactly what they stand for, and you buy into it or you don’t.

Be yourself, activate that fame point. Don’t try to be who other people tell you your consumer wants you to be.

Most importantly, consumer ‘needs’ are always more important than brand ‘wants’.

This is what it all boils down to. You want people to look at your content, like you and ultimately buy you. But despite what some in our industry think, most people don’t truly care about brands, so we’ve got to work extra hard. Find something your consumers do care about, and find a role in delivering that aspect in an authentic and credible way within your area.